The Cookie-less Future

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Hi, Courtney, thank you so much for joining us today.

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Hey, Sarah, thanks so much to you and the Qualified team for having me.

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Okay, so today we're talking about the cookie-less future.

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But to start, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself and about thick

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cents and

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how is thick cents just thinking about cookies and a cookie-less future?

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Yeah, for sure.

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So first of all, for those of you that don't know what 6 cents does or who we

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are, we help

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our customers uncover and leverage data to achieve revenue targets.

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And I've been with 6 cents for a little bit over 5 and a half years.

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I started on board to lead our field and partner marketing teams and then start

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our community

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programs as well.

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And just over the course of working with various customers and partners and

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being a user myself,

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I wanted to transition to product marketing to help continue solidify our

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position in the

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market as leaders.

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And so now I'm serving 6 cents in a product marketing capacity focused

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specifically on

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our advertising capabilities.

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Perfect, which is why I'm so excited to have you here.

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Because I think as we talk about a cookie-less future, I think advertising is

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probably the

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most, obviously the most impact I think where everyone is the most concerned.

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So I would love to chat really quick.

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I think before we even get into like the strategies or what people can be

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thinking about from

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cookies in general for marketers, I'd love to just have a rundown from you on

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what is

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cookies mean?

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Like if there's different types of cookies, how should we be thinking about

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them?

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How can we define them?

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And then more importantly, how can we use them in marketing?

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What's changing at the end of this year?

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Yeah, definitely.

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So I think we tend to complex by cookies a little bit and make them super

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technical.

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But essentially, cookies are pieces of information saved by our web browsers to

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track our online

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behavior.

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And the types of data cookies are storing are things like user names, passwords

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, our search

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preferences, our interests.

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So it's things like that.

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And there are several different types of cookies.

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You've got your session cookies, your first party cookies, your third party

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cookies.

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But for the purposes of our conversation today, I want to keep it focused on

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third party cookies,

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which the industry commonly refers to as three PC.

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And as marketers, there's essentially two ways that we use third party cookies.

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The first is to target our audience.

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And the second is to measure the effectiveness of those targeting programs.

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So really straightforward.

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But in the last sort of several years as we've come up with different privacy

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laws and data

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protection regulations, consumers and privacy advocates have said, you know

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what?

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Like we don't want to feel like we're being followed around by ads.

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If I am on Nike's website looking at shoes and then I switch over to ESPN to

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check basketball

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scores for the March Madness tournament, I don't want to see an ad from Nike

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trying

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to get me to buy their shoes.

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We almost feel like this is creepy, if you will.

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And so some of the major web browsers like Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, they

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've said,

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okay, you know what?

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As users, we respect your privacy.

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And so we're just going to do away with third party cookies.

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And Google as the last major player sort of like standing if you will has

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gotten a lot

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of pressure as you might imagine to follow suit.

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And so they've said 2024 is the year.

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We are going to start slowly deprecating third party cookies and by the end of

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the year,

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they're going to be gone.

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That's so interesting.

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I loved your example of looking at shoes and then going on the internet.

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Because the first thing I think of is five, maybe 10 years ago, that kind of

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retargeting

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I thought was so cool.

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And especially being a marketing where I'm like, oh, I forgot about this.

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And now I see this ad and it was just so, I mean, as impactful it worked, like

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it helped.

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That's why it became such a retargeting became such a like massive advertising

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strategy.

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But I think it's so interesting is over time as especially people listening

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into this session,

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a lot of us are marketers.

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We're so in tune to what's happening that I think we've all yeah, we've all

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gotten almost

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too used to it and we are turned off by it.

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Like it is getting creepy.

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We're like, man, I like, or I, it's just gotten to be too much.

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And as marketers as tends have evolved and we've all learned this strategy, I

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think it's

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just less impactful.

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And what I'm so excited to chat about today is yes, this cookieless future is

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happening,

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but I feel like this is a way it's been going for a while.

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Like advertisers and marketers have been talking about their strategies that

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have been leading

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to, you know, less reliance on cookies and more like first party.

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So I'm excited to keep chatting about that because I think it's taking us in a

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direction

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that we've been headed for in a while anyways.

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So with that being said, okay, now we understand all the buzzwords.

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We know first party cookies, third party cookies.

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I how many times I say cookies before I get too hungry.

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You are a marketer on this call and you're like, you know what, I knew about

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this.

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I knew this was coming, but now it's time for me to actually put a strategy in

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place.

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What is the first thing that you would do to start thinking about this and

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making an

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impact to your organization?

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Yeah, I love your reference, you know, in terms of thinking about we've been

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pairing

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for this for a while.

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Now I started with six cents in 2018 and this was a topic all the way back then

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So it's been a long time coming.

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And I think as marketers, when we think about third party cookies, we just have

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to address

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the fact that some of our current strategies and tactics are inevitably going

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to break.

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And so I'll just give a couple of examples.

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I think we can start with visitor retargeting.

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That's a common strategy that's pretty easy to wrap your mind around.

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But when you have an individual that comes to your website, but they don't take

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some

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sort of conversion act, like downloading a form, or sorry, excuse me,

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downloading any

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book or filling out a form, and then they leave your website, we may set up

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programs

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to try to get them back to the website.

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And this just isn't possible without third party cookies.

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Another good one that's really common in B2C is affiliate marketing.

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So this is when you pay another person to advertise your product.

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Let's just take an example with me and you here, Sarah.

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I'm trying really hard to get back into running shape.

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I have no idea if you are, but let's just say you yourself are an avid runner

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and you're

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not.

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Okay.

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But you're still going to give me the advice and you wrote a blog on the top 10

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best long

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distance running shoes for women.

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I look at your recommendations.

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I love Nike.

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I click on Nike and I go and I purchase the shoe.

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D might give you a percentage of that purchase for sharing your link and

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helping them share

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the product.

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But the problem here is most common.

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What happens is I click on the link.

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I look at the Nike shoe.

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I can't decide.

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I go check out Brooks or Mizuno or Adidas.

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And then 10 days later, I go back to actually make the purchase of the Nike

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shoe.

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It's really hard to track what's happening once you leave the website visit.

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And so I think this is a great example of where the measurement side is going

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to come

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into play.

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Like, if I go back 10 days later and make that purchase as an affiliate market

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er, Sarah,

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you're not going to get the credit for that.

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Another example, let's just take third party data, right?

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So a lot of people to do targeting and even our own customers will layer this

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on top of

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six cents account data.

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You'll work with a vendor like Oracle.

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You'll purchase a list that I want all users that work for marketing at

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technology companies

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with 5,000 employees or more.

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And the companies do 3 billion annually in revenue.

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Strategies like this don't work without third party cookies.

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And so I think it's just really important that first and foremost, as marketers

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, we're

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taking stock of like, what are the things we're doing today that are working

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really

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well that mainly leverage third party cookies?

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Then we can start to think about, okay, how do I shift those strategies?

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Yeah, that's such a good point of going through all of those advertising

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strategies and trying

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to understand which one of these are leveraging third party cookies.

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I think your example that you started with retargeting will be such an

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important one

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for probably most people on this call that are in B2B marketing.

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I think that's a pretty common tactic.

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What I find so interesting about this is, well, I love retargeting ads.

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I've used them for a very long time.

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My background was in digital marketing before I got into demand gen is I'm

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curious to see

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if the quality of people that are converting goes up with this decrease in

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third party

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cookies because if I think about like, okay, I'm retargeting someone they've

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been to my

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website, they've done research and then I follow them around the internet,

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either they have

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it converted.

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Yes, they might come back.

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They might fill out a form.

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But is that ad that's driving them there?

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Are they still a really high value, like high intent or high value?

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Maybe not.

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Or someone who has come to your website, browsed around, left, and then a

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couple of days later

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comes back organically to me, that organic revisit is probably a better signal

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that they

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have a higher likelihood to buy than that retargeting.

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So anyways, it's just such an interesting that we might lose retargeting, but I

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'm curious

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to see if those visitors that are like multi session visitors that come back

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over and over

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again do convert at a higher rate.

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So I will be curious to see how that goes.

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And then it is also interesting to think about, yes, the affiliate marketing,

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for me,

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the biggest thing that concerns me about third party cookies going away is

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attribution.

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And I think that's something as someone in demand gen, we're always trying to

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think of

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the best way to like tie every single dollar spent to a dollar of revenue.

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But for a long time, we've been talking about, is it worth it?

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Like is having all that attribution worth it?

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Or if your company is, you know, if you're driving pipeline, it's converting at

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a really

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like good conversion percentage.

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That's what you want.

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So being able to see so granular about the attribution.

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So there's, it's so funny that there's been like these ongoing conversations

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sort of happening

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in the demand gen market about attribution anyways.

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And I think this third party cookie going away will actually help some teams

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make the

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push to get to an attribution space that isn't so tied to a one to one spend to

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pipeline ratio.

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And I'm excited for that.

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So anyways, that is my ramble.

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So we talked about auditing first going through your strategies, but Courtney,

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what's next

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after you've audited?

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What would you do next?

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Yeah, no, and Sarah, I will just add to that.

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I love the topic of attribution because it's so hard to do.

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It's always been hard to do.

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And if you're taking an account based approach, especially with advertising the

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traditional

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metrics, they don't matter.

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They don't like who cares if I go to qualified's website and my sister goes to

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qualified's

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website and George goes to qualified's website.

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Now if, you know, I go and my boss Nate goes and Latine comes to your website,

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well, now

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that that really matters because we're all at the same account.

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And so I definitely think it will hopefully because measurement is going to be

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so impacted

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on my third party cookies, I think hopefully it forces marketers to start

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really adopting

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some of those account based metrics and looking at advertising as more of like

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an influence

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type of metric.

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Yeah.

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I think you can see a world where if people have been making that case to their

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boss for

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a long time and then now the sudden you're like, oh, well, I can't report on

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that.

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Anyways, because third party cookies are gone.

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So hopefully we'll help drive them a direction of a way I think the market's

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been going for

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a long time anyways.

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Yeah, totally.

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Okay.

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So you asked me what's next.

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I think once you've taken stock of all right, what are we doing that's using

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third party

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cookies.

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Now it's time to think about, okay, we can't do that anymore.

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So where can we move that money?

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And I think one really great option is to consider wall wall gardens or clothes

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networks.

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So those are channels where users are primary logged in.

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So it's really good to think about now it's time to try Facebook and Instagram.

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I think in our space LinkedIn is already a really, you know, common channel for

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BW marketers,

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but definitely LinkedIn and definitely Google because Google properties are all

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going to

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be protected as well.

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That is, I love that rethinking the strategy.

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So if you are looking at your, you audited and you're like, Oh, shoot, I'm

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spending 40%

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of my advertising budget on retargeting.

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I don't want to lose that 40%.

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I think a lot of times with marketing budgets, you can lose that money.

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So it's like, okay, now after that audit, let's figure out a better way to

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spend that money.

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And you can still do it in advertising to your point.

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You can do it on things like LinkedIn or Facebook or places where those people

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are logged in

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and you can identify them.

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And again, this feels like something we've been doing for a long time anyways,

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but figure

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not where to reinvest that money in places that aren't reliant on third party

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cookies.

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Yeah, absolutely.

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Okay.

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So I know we are getting close to our 20 minutes here.

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So I would love to ask the final question here.

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Market teams, how can you get the most out of our marketing calories in a

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cookie list

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future after we've audited and reevaluate in our strategies?

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Yeah, I think so.

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And we've already sort of said this a little bit, but my advice is just to

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approach it

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the same way you've always approached any of your marketing strategies, measure

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what works

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and put more money into those strategies and turn the things off that aren't

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working.

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I think it's important to keep in mind though that like some of the strategies

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and tactics

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that we've been doing that may have previously worked, they won't work anymore,

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right?

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So some of our things are going to break, but as long as you're testing what

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works and

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you can measure that against your KPIs, then you can move your money around

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like we've just

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said to where you know it's working as needed.

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I definitely think it's going to be a little bit of a turbulent year for sure.

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It's trial and error, but I think we just have to stay agile.

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I totally agree.

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If you're listening to this, I would say start now.

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If you're relying pretty heavily on ad spend, start doing research and figuring

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out how much

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of that ad spend is reliant on a third party cookie.

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I would start that immediately after this call, start to figure that out.

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And then if you have a high percentage of your budget that is relying on third

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party cookies,

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two things that we've talked about is one, start thinking about where else

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would you

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respean that money and start thinking of a strategy for and how you're going to

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go to

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your executive team and defend why you would reallocate that budget versus

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losing that

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budget.

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I think in a time where resources are scarce, it can be easy to just say, oh,

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we'll just

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take that budget back and just put it somewhere else in the company.

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If you know that it's going to be impactful to keep advertising, start working

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on a strategy

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now to defend that budget.

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And then secondly, as I would start thinking about your attribution, if you're

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currently

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doing a very reliant, like last touch, last click to pipeline, and that is

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coming from

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a lot of ad spend that's reliant on third party cookies, start brainstorming

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now the

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new way that you want to measure this to courties point is that an ABX is

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talking about account

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engagement.

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Is it looking at account movement, but you are going to have to transition away

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from

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that strategy.

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And it's better to start thinking of it now asking your peers now versus

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waiting until

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November and panicking when you realize all of your attribution is about to

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break and

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you might lose your budget.

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So yeah, being said, Courtney, thank you so much for joining us today for this

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session.

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For everyone else that's listening, we do have a checklist to help you bring

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back to

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your own organization and look at some of the things that we talked about today

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and work

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your way through that list to make sure you are on track for the end of this

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year that

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end of 2024 when Google third party cookies are going away.

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So go ahead and download that link and that's going to give you your checklist

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to fall along.

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Your ways, Courtney, thank you so much for joining us today.

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This was super helpful.

16:27

Yeah, it's been a pleasure.

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Thanks so much, Sarah.